Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [91]
DEAN GUNDERSON That was another LSD night. The car offended me, I don’t know. The guy actually came out, and we watched him try and get it off: He backed the car up and slammed on his brakes so it would roll off the hood, but it ended up rolling back towards the windshield wipers. It got stuck in there, and he drove off.
MARK ARM The next morning, everyone was in the place’s pool for a while. Matt stayed in the pool by himself, and he wouldn’t leave. He started hovering his hands above the water, and he’s totally mesmerized and focused, going, “It’s like glass. It’s like glass.” He was trapped in glass. (Laughs.) Some fuckin’ switch went off in his head, and it hasn’t flipped back yet.
EDDIE SPAGHETTI Early on, I remember being at Sub Pop—I was stuffing some singles for them for some spare change—and they put in the cassette of Bleach, and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is a local band? This is so fucking good.” I couldn’t believe all these bands were from the same town that we were now living in.
JACK ENDINO Some of the biggest records I made on Sub Pop were when I’d only been an engineer for one or two years. Mudhoney’s Superfuzz Bigmuff, the first Soundgarden EP; Bleach was recorded in ’88.
Nirvana came in for Bleach, and they weren’t sure they wanted to put it on Sub Pop, frankly. Sub Pop was such a new label that they were still thinking, Maybe we can get on Touch and Go or SST or some other label. Kurt was basically thinking, I’m gonna shop it to some other people, so we’re gonna have our friend Jason here pay for it. So Jason paid the $600 and change.
JASON EVERMAN (Nirvana guitarist; Soundgarden bassist) I grew up on the Kitsap Peninsula, which bisects the Puget Sound. I met Chad Channing in my homeroom class in sixth grade. To me and my friends, Chad was this mysterious guy. We perceived him as mature and sophisticated and exotic. His family moved twice a year. He had a mustache in sixth grade. And he had long hair. I didn’t have long hair, none of my friends really did. We ended up playing together in a thrash-metal band called Stone Crow.
KERRY GREEN (Dickless guitarist) Chad Channing was this odd little pixie guy. He was always really lighthearted and sweet. I heard that once when Nirvana were out on tour, Krist woke up and saw Chad driving with his teeth, with his hands behind his back. Krist decided to take over driving at that point.
JASON EVERMAN Around ’88, Chad was like, “You should check out this band that I’m playing with.” I don’t even know if they were called Nirvana at this point. I went to see them at the Community World Theater in Tacoma, I’m guessing, and they were great. Even then it was pretty evident.
Through Chad, I started hanging out with Kurt and Krist socially. I liked Kurt. There was a point in time where I considered us friends. It was probably Kurt who asked me for the loan. I had money from working in Alaska as a commercial fisherman. No, they never repaid it, but I’m not going to go crazy over $500. I’ve lost more money than that to friends, so whatever.
JACK ENDINO Bleach was just another album. I thought it was a very good other album, but I thought, Here’s another great record that nobody’s ever gonna hear.
ALICE WHEELER My first band shoot was Nirvana in 1988. I usually got the jobs Charles Peterson didn’t want. Which is why I got Nirvana’s first single, because everybody in Seattle thought Mudhoney was gonna be the big band and they didn’t pay any attention to Nirvana.
KIM THAYIL Nirvana’s influences were certainly the Melvins and us. I saw Kurt at a Melvins show and I told him how much I loved Bleach, and he said, “Well, you should consider yourselves our biggest influence.” When they got going, Nirvana were huge fans of Soundgarden ’cause we kind of came out of the punk scene,